Infernal Machines

by Jacobs, John Hornor

  Livia said, ‘Forging a treaty with them can do no harm.’

  ‘Tamberlaine might disagree,’ Fisk said. ‘And disagreements with the Emperor often end in crucifixion.’

  ‘Gynth calls them “the eldest”,’ I said. ‘The other vaettir will fall in line.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Fisk said.

  ‘I trust Gynth,’ I said.

  ‘Ia-dammit, Shoe,’ Fisk said. ‘You and your strays.’

  I went back out and beckoned Gynth to bring Illva and Ellva inside the praetorium. He seemed a bit surprised, and turned his scarred face to look at the two ancient vaettir. They followed him, in stately manner, ducking their heads to enter the tent.

  ‘So we will make a bargain, then,’ Fisk said. ‘If you assist us against the Medieran army, and keep your kind from molesting our people on the Hardscrabble, I will make treaty with you.’

  ‘Cut a furrow,’ Gynth said.

  Ellva, the ghost of what seemed to me a smile playing about her face, approached the command table. Between Gynth, Illva, and Ellva, the large praetorium tent seemed small and close. She placed a fingernail on a map and traced a line down the length of it. The sound of scratching filled the tent. When she was finished, she pulled half of the paper away and held it.

  Livia approached the table. ‘The Big Rill,’ she said. ‘And further west. All of it. The Illvatch. And all lands beyond.’

  Fisk frowned, his face intense and dissatisfied. But in a moment, he nodded.

  ‘Beyond the Big Rill, the Illvatch, and the lands further west will remain vaettir lands. We will make no forays there. We will build no more settlements. Those people that live there now must be allowed to leave and not be harmed.’

  Ellva looked at Illva and then, as if coming to some silent consensus, extended her hand to Fisk. With her nail, she dug into her alabaster palm until blood welled up. Fisk withdrew a longknife and scored his hand – reopening the pink wound he’d scored in his bargain with Neruda – and drew blood.

  He placed his very small hand in her very large hand and they mingled blood and made pact.

  ‘Ia help me,’ Fisk said. ‘I hope I haven’t sealed my doom.’

  ‘You may have changed it,’ Livia said.

  Lina, Sapientia, and I were debriefed shortly after. Gynth and his vaettir … parents? Ancestors? I knew not what to call them save eldest – left to roam the peaks of the Eldvatch, as Gynth was wont to do.

  On the command table stood a box that I was familiar with. Samantha once held it safe. Beleth searched for it. But now it belonged solely to Fisk.

  ‘Why is that out?’ I asked.

  Livia brought a cup of wine and handed it to me. ‘I, myself, have asked him this many times. My husband has not given me a satisfactory answer.’

  ‘I do not know when the Medieran army will be here, but it will be soon. Their van routed your men, and the other scouts I have riding the Hardscrabble have not returned.’ He looked grim. ‘There have been very few refugees.’

  ‘They’re killing everyone they come across,’ I said. It was not a question.

  ‘Mediera occupied the Hardscrabble before, under the first King Diegal, and tried to integrate his people with the dvergar. He warred with the vaettir. This time, his descendant will not be so lenient. There’ll be no indigenes left, if the Medierans win. No Rumans. No settlers. A clean slate to put down Medieran seeds.’

  ‘The vaettir might take issue with that,’ Lina said.

  Fisk shook his head. ‘It is the last resort, should all else fail.’

  ‘If the fortifications fall, and the valley is overrun, we flee into the mountains,’ I said.

  ‘We cannot pass the Pactum Wall. I will not break bargain with Neruda,’ Fisk said.

  Lina raised an eyebrow. ‘If we’re overrun, will it even matter? We do not have separate fates, now. They are joined.’ She drank from her wine. ‘I have spoken with Neruda about this, and he will confirm it, should you ask, but should we be routed, all bonds are broken. “It is the dvergar character to survive,” he said. “Our stories will continue on, and you will be the tellers of them.” He’s got a way with words, that one,’ she said.

  Fisk nodded. Livia considered my granddaughter. ‘You are a bright woman,’ she said. ‘I would like to know you better.’

  Lina looked at her, askance. She was not one much for small talk. ‘I—’

  ‘Take lunch with me, ride the fortifications,’ Livia said.

  Lina glanced at me. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Though I don’t know why you’d be so interested in me.’

  Livia placed a fond hand on my shoulder. ‘Shoestring is our closest friend,’ she said. ‘He is part of our family. So I would know his granddaughter.’

  Lina looked at me. ‘You told them.’

  I shrugged.

  We drank some, and they brought cheese, bread, oil, and olives.

  ‘You can’t use the daemon hand,’ I said. ‘What good will it do?’

  ‘At Hot Springs, it stopped Hellfire. Triggers were pulled and no Hellfire released,’ Fisk said.

  ‘But the Crimson Man was riding you like a bronco. It wasn’t your call. And it was all guns, not just the ones pointed at us,’ I said. ‘Once you let him out of the cage, there is no coming back. No Agrippina to snatch him away. And I want you to consider this,’ I said, looking at him closely. ‘Beleth and whatever was riding him wanted what is in that hand to get loose. He wouldn’t have given it to you, otherwise.’

  Fisk rang a bell and a junior officer entered. ‘Find Engineer Samantha and bring her here. Sapientia as well.’ He turned back to us. ‘Let us have the engineers’ thoughts.’

  When Samantha and Sapientia entered, they brought with them the scorched, acrid scent of the smelt. Both wore overalls, thick leather engineers’ aprons, and their tool belts, with heavy gloves tucked into them. On top of their heads, thick oculars were perched, I assumed as protective wear. They’d both cropped their hair very short.

  At my stare, Sapientia shrugged and said, ‘Production requires the practical, Shoe. Long hair gets in the way and is likely to catch fire.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ I said.

  Fisk said to Samantha, ‘We were discussing the daemon hand. What possible purpose could Beleth, and the thing inside him, have had to create it and give it to me?’

  Samantha’s expression stilled. Here was a woman hearing her own fears and darkness stated aloud. ‘I have thought on this for a long time and have arrived at no conclusions. And that distresses me greatly. Beleth was my master, and for so long something else leered out at me through his eyes.’ She sat down wearily and again I was struck at how thin she had become. Sapientia was a strong, strapping woman with powerful arms and an impressive physique – obviously needed for the rigours of the practical engineer’s life. But Samantha had wasted, shrunk, the enormity of her tasks causing some diminution in her. I hoped she was not sick, that in her flesh did not lurk the same devouring sickness that took my Illina.

  ‘First, he created the hand to fulfil the immediate task of finding Isabelle. And that it did. But it had a secondary purpose. Beleth was always concerned with vestments,’ she said.

  ‘Vestments? Clothing?’ Livia asked.

  ‘No. In summoner’s terms, vestments are the containers in which we place daemonic energy. Every Hellfire round is a vestment. Every daemonlight lantern. Every engine in every ship, as well,’ Samantha said.

  ‘And every daemon-gripped,’ Lina added.

  ‘Yes,’ Samantha said, looking to my granddaughter. ‘But those are flawed vestments. An engine chamber or lantern is the perfect one, because it can be amply warded and it is almost a permanent thing without the stressor of having too much energy stored inside too small a vestment.’ She raised a finger. ‘However, we’re talking about energy that thinks. Daemonlight imps, they have the intelligence of insects. But engine daemons? They are intelligent – possibly a match for ourselves, if not greater – and their anger at their
enslavement is tremendous.’

  ‘Enslavement?’ Fisk said. ‘Ia-damn. Rume and her slaves.’

  ‘You are the representative of Rume, pard,’ I said. ‘You are Rume.’

  ‘How did I get here?’ Fisk said, scowling.

  ‘A strange road with many turnings,’ Livia said, touching his hair. For a moment, he pressed into her, closing his eyes, feeling the sensation of her hand there, her closeness. It was a comfortable thing, and the mindlessness of it made me happy for them. ‘But we are here now.’

  ‘Consider this,’ Sapientia said. ‘You make treaties for Rume and lead its men, but at this point, the fight isn’t between Rume and Mediera.’

  ‘Then who is it between?’ Fisk asked.

  ‘Us and them,’ Sapientia said. ‘We fight for survival, now.’

  Lina bobbed her head in agreement. ‘They are coming, and won’t care if we’re Ruman or dvergar or both.’ This last bit she said and glanced at me. I brushed it off.

  ‘She’s right, pard,’ I said.

  Fisk said nothing, but looked at Livia. For a moment, some silent communication passed between them, almost the same as when Ellva and Illva had met glances before.

  ‘The hand,’ Fisk said.

  ‘Yes. Right. Daemonic enslavement,’ Samantha responded. ‘So there is a chain of being to daemons. There are the imps, and the engine daemons. Then there are daemons of such power and intelligence that to comprehend them, one has to comprehend godhood. They outstrip mankind. And consequently are unsuited for any vestment,’ Samantha said.

  ‘And that’s what Beleth stuffed into Isabelle’s hand,’ Livia said.

  ‘I’m afraid so. He made some bargain with it, lured it in without copious blood. Or possibly he’d spilled blood before that in preparation. Beleth was a genius when it came to devilry,’ Samantha said. She shifted in her chair uncomfortably and took a drink of heavily watered wine. ‘Ultimately, he wanted that daemon to be free here.’

  ‘Should it become free, what would be the consequence?’ I asked. ‘Another Rume? Another Harbour Town?’

  Samantha shook her head. ‘Possibly. Or worse.’ She cocked an eyebrow at Fisk. ‘You wore him around your neck, you had him riding you. What do you think his purpose is?’

  ‘My memory of that time is indistinct,’ Fisk said. ‘But I remember glee. And hunger. All-consuming hunger.’

  ‘That’s not my favourite thing I’ve ever heard,’ I said.

  ‘Not the favourite thing I’ve ever said,’ Fisk responded.

  Samantha tugged at her lower lip, her eyes focused on the praetorium tent wall. The long stare, the one that saw beyond borders. ‘What did it say in the caldera? When it had joined with Agrippina? It would create an army?’

  ‘“I will drown the world in blood. I will roast your infants on spits and feast on their flesh. I will slaughter you all. I shall bathe the land in fire,”’ I said. And then she kissed me.

  Fisk sighed and took his wife’s hand.

  ‘We have two days at the most, before the Medierans are here. Their cavalry rules the Hardscrabble now and just waits for their main force.’

  He picked up a cup of wine and downed it.

  ‘Come what may,’ he said, looking at us with a strange, helpless expression. One I’d never seen before on him. ‘I will not use the hand.’

  That evening – after sharing a drink with Sumner, who had clapped me on the shoulder and called me friend; we were compatriots, then, since our survival against the Hellish spawn of the Medierans on the Hardscrabble – Lina came to me as I sat near the fire with Gynth. Ellva and Illva were gone, tracing paths known only to them on the high reaches, where the gambel and pine seethed in the night wind.

  In the flames, I performed my own summoning. Faces of those lost to me. Cimbri and Reeves. Secundus and Carnelia. Banty and Gnaeus. The face of Agrippina. Cornelius. Beleth. Bess.

  And last, Illina. Those I’d never see again. Those I would never forget. In the praetorium tent Fisk and Livia took what comfort they could from each other, and their son, but here, underneath the stars, it was as if I were on the trail with only ghosts conjured by firelight.

  ‘Old one,’ Lina said. ‘Do you have anything to drink?’ She emerged from the darkness and sat opposite me, the fire casting her face in a roseate glow.

  ‘Cacique,’ I said, and unlimbered my flask. I tossed it to her and she snatched it out of the air and took a pull.

  I rolled cigarettes and gave her one and we sat, smoking. Gynth rose without a word and strode off into the darkness. Dreaming untold vaettir dreams, eyes open. The camp stood hushed. The Grenthvar was silent – no hammer-falls filled the air, no stink of smelt, no bleat of goat, no scream of child.

  ‘If it all goes to shite,’ Lina said softly, looking at the cherry of her cigarette, ‘find me.’

  I remained quiet for a moment, letting that sink in. ‘If it all goes to shite,’ I said, ‘it will be ants swarming from a boot-struck anthill.’

  ‘This ant knows burrows other ants don’t,’ she said.

  ‘I cannot leave Livia or Fisk. Or their child,’ I said.

  ‘If you can collect them, come.’ She rose. ‘I’ll wait at the far northern part of the Pactum, where the wall meets the bare rock of ridgeline. Understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  She was gone.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Every Man Who Makes Claim

  To It Is Easily Dispossessed

  THE RUMAN HOST marshalled itself in the gullet of the Grenthvar before dawn. A cacophony of noise filled the air: horns, bells, braying mules, nickers of horses, the chants of soldiers, prayers of lictors and the devout, the rumbling of wheeled cannons and munition wagons, vardos and barber jaunts. Curses. And there was weeping. Terrified men soon bullied into silence by other men. Dvergar children in the Breadbasket.

  In the dim half-light before dawn, as legionnaires, lictors, dvergar, engineers and the breathless Ruman and dwarf host moved into defensive positions, Fisk held high a daemonlight lantern and leapt to the top of a boulder where most of the assembled men and women could see and hear him clearly. He beckoned Neruda and Praeverta to join him, and they took position beside him.

  ‘Rumans! Dvergar! Men and women of the Hardscrabble!’ Fisk bellowed, his voice echoing across the hushed valley. ‘Some of you were born in Latinum, far away. Most of you were born here, in the West, sons and grandsons of men who came here for fortune, for honour. Some for duty! They held the land. For a fleeting moment. But it is a big land, and every man who makes claim to it is easily dispossessed! But we are here. How many of you have spilled your blood?’

  There was an undulating yawp of acknowledgement, like a chorus of barking dogs – I realised it was the wolves of the Seventh Occidentalia. Then the bulls of the Fifth joined in.

  ‘How many of you have poured your sweat into the dust?’ Fisk intoned.

  More response. From the dvergar throats, the chant of ‘Vhan! Vhan! Vhan!’ came. The noise was titanic. I found myself raising a fist in the air, pumping it madly.

  ‘In our company, dvergar!’ Fisk yelled. ‘In our company, vaettir!’

  Praeverta gave a screeching call in imitation of an attacking stretcher. Then, from the rear of the army, it was answered by Gynth. Two more voices answered his piercing call – Illva and Ellva – the eldest. The father and mother of the West.

  ‘We are hard-bitten! We are indomitable! We are of the Hardscrabble!’

  Deafening chants ripped through the air of the valley, beating at the lightening sky.

  But it was short-lived. They fell silent once more.

  ‘Keep your heads down,’ Fisk said, softer now. He had them. They all strained to hear his words. ‘Mark your shot before firing. Be smart. And kill every Medieran that tries to enter this valley.’ He extended his hand, outstretched toward the west, stretching out an index finger as if some augur on the steps of the Cælian temple to Ia, making a divination. ‘Waste no shot.’

  Silence.
He bowed his head.

  ‘We are the last of us,’ Fisk said. No one other than Livia and myself would know that he was afraid. And his fear chilled me. The arc of his life – outcast, father, solitary wanderer, noble, and now leader. All the strange turnings to bring him to this place collapsed then and for a moment became overwhelming.

  Fiscelion began to screech in great distemper. Legionnaires hooted, and the wolves of the Seventh howled, laughing. ‘Little wolf!’ a legionnaire shouted.

  Fisk raised his hands. ‘We fight not for Rume! We fight not for dvergar! Who do we fight for?’

  Livia stood nearby, looking up at her husband, holding Fiscelion. Lupina hovered nearby.

  ‘We fight for us! We fight because we are of this place. Remember!’

  Neruda clapped, and Praeverta held a carbine in one hand and a hand-scythe in the other, exultant.

  ‘To arms, then. And may whatever god you hold dear look over you,’ Fisk said, and stepped down from his makeshift stage.

  The sky was just turning blue at the edges.

  Each man took his position, in every trench, every foxhole, behind every embankment. Cannoneers crouched by wagons sitting heavy on springs, full of cotton-swaddled Hellfire shells, each munition as thick as a man’s thigh. On piles of slag lay legionnaires, sooty and black, prone and watchful. White-knuckled hands gripping carbines.

  Gynth, Illva, and Ellva stood behind us, on the command embankment. We had a small contingent of horsemen, each armed with large-bore carbines and the strength to use them, horses champing and agitated. The killing field was open, the mist from the Grenthvar floating across it like some ghostly curtain being pulled away to reveal a bellicose performance.

  An ember streaked across the sky, casting hard shadows from every standing stone, every legionnaire, each man a sundial marking the passage of time. It shone like a falling star, white-hot and angry.

  All faces turned toward the heavens as it reached its apex and began to fall.

  It impacted with the earth, halfway from the mouth of the Grenthvar to the end of the valley, in the middle of the killing fields.